


All Sussed Out

by hauntedjaeger (saellys)



Series: Compatible [2]
Category: Pacific Rim (2013)
Genre: AU, F/M, Prequel
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2013-09-18
Updated: 2013-09-18
Packaged: 2017-12-27 00:01:32
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence, Underage
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,003
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/971845
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/saellys/pseuds/hauntedjaeger
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>The killing machine he was fighting is gone now, transformed back into a fourteen-year-old girl, half his mass if that and probably not getting much bigger, wheezing and crying because Chuck Hansen just drove a hanbō into her gut. He's an asshole.</p>
            </blockquote>





	All Sussed Out

**Author's Note:**

  * For [quigonejinn](https://archiveofourown.org/users/quigonejinn/gifts).



7 August, 2019

This isn't a compatibility test. 

Good thing, too, or the way Chuck is getting his ass handed to him might give people the wrong idea. A week away from his sixteenth birthday, he's big, rangy, working on what will someday be serious muscle, and he can take a hit and keep going. He's already sparred with every other cadet in his class, and dropped them all eventually. 

That's why this fight is attracting a crowd. Mako isn't even a cadet. 

Uncle Scott suggested this, as he often suggests ideas that are either brilliant or really stupid. He and Chuck's old man are at Kodiak on a sort of working leave, speaking to cadets about the Conn-Pod and drive systems in Basic Jaeger Tech. They came to the Kwoon an hour after supper, but found the mat occupied by Marshal Pentecost and his daughter, running through non-contact hanbō drills. "Oi, Marshal," Scott called after watching ten minutes of a very slow, very graceful dance, "how's she going to learn anything if she doesn't land a hit?" 

Pentecost didn't pause his own rudiments, and the girl echoed them in miniature. "It would hardly be fair to match her with an experienced Ranger." 

Scott's elbow whacked Chuck in the shoulder, and he stumbled over the edge of the mat. "Herc's boy'll do it. Hardly experienced, eh?" 

The Marshal held up a hand and Mako dropped her arms at once. He and the girl regarded each other for a second, and Chuck had just enough time to wonder what Pentecost meant by "fair" before the Marshal was stepping backward off the mat and Scott said, "G'wan, Chuck, get a stick." His uncle grinned at Herc, who silently projected disapproval.

The problem, Chuck reflects as Mako flips him onto his back two minutes later, is not that he can't anticipate her moves. He can see what she's going to do just as well as if he has an HUD; the trajectory she will take and the path of her hanbō are perfectly clear to him. The problem is that she's too bloody fast for him to do anything about it. He feels like he's trying to move through water, and she's an eel, slipping forward to strike at his shoulder, or his thigh, or to stop the stick just next to his cheek. And then she's darting back out of his clumsy reach to do it all over again.

Uncle Scott counts strikes for a while, but halfway through the second round he stops keeping track, and now Chuck wonders how long everyone will let this go on. He catches glimpses of his fellow cadets watching, a couple of them with black eyes he gave them. Must be a hell of a show. 

When Mako levers her hanbō around to swat the back of his neck, he sees the opening he hasn't had this whole time. He jabs the end of his stick between Mako's navel and her ribs, two-handed, putting everything he's got into it, because the angle is awkward and this one has to count. Mako doubles over, dropping her staff, clutching her stomach, and Chuck thinks, _Shit_. 

"That's enough," the Marshal says in a low voice. Yeah, of course he'd end this now. But Chuck's bitterness disappears when Mako coughs. The killing machine he was fighting is gone now, transformed back into a fourteen-year-old girl, half his mass if that and probably not getting much bigger, wheezing and crying because Chuck Hansen just drove a hanbō into her gut. He's an asshole. 

He can already imagine the mess hall conversation tomorrow morning. "Wow, Hansen, you really kicked the shit out of that little girl." Also, Stacker Pentecost is going to kill him.

The Marshal helps her up, speaking quietly in Japanese, and Mako and Chuck bow awkwardly to each other, and nobody seems to know whether they should applaud. Chuck feels Scott's hand land on his shoulder as Pentecost leads Mako away, carrying her shoes for her. "Let's go nurse your wounded pride," his uncle says. Chuck just stares at him. His pride isn't wounded.

Almost everyone else has cleared out, so there's no one in his way when he runs after Mako. "Wait," he gasps, and they do, the Marshal's hand on her shoulder. "I'm really sorry, Mako. I swear it's not going to happen again." 

She has a neutral expression on her face as she looks up at him, and she draws in a slow, deep breath and says, "No, it won't," and she walks away down the corridor.

* * *

30 June, 2021

This is a compatibility test. 

So when Mako lets Chuck drop her to the mat with a wallop at her calves, he knows she let him, and he knows what's coming next, and he walks straight into it. While he's still stepping forward with his right leg, she hooks her right foot behind his ankle and plants her left just above his knee. Push with the left, pull with the right, and suddenly Chuck's whole leg is a lever that drops him on his ass. "Two-one," Pentecost declares. 

They get back up and Mako takes three steps back, almost to the edge of the mat, and tilts her head to one side, inviting him over. Thirty seconds in and she already has his strategy sussed out. Chuck has reach and strength to his advantage, so he holds his hanbō out like a sword, establishing a radius of nearly two meters that she'll have to get around if she wants to land a hit. If he lets her closer, he has no chance. 

The audience is made up of her classmates now--mostly Chuck's age, a few older military transfers. No one as young as Mako. She enlisted just before her sixteenth birthday, too, and that caused quite a stir, especially since the last person who did that still hasn't climbed into the Jaeger that was waiting for him. ( _Whatever happened to the Hansens?_ goes the gossip rag refrain.) Chuck glances around the Kwoon now, as Mako watches him, and wonders how many of these cadets got the same treatment he did at her hands. He'll give as good as he can, if not as good as he gets. Entertaining them, or avenging them, or whatever he's trying to do, isn't the point, just a nice byproduct. He'll be satisfied to come out of this with two strikes and no broken bones.

She swoops in at last, feinting left and stabbing right, and he's ready for that but she's still too fast for him, and the stick thwocks against his ribs. It doesn't quite knock the breath from him, but it's a nice sharp pain to make him focus. "Three-one," says the Marshal, and then adds something in Japanese. Mako doesn't respond. 

Game point. Chuck adjusts his grip, loosens his hips, drops his shoulders. When Mako swings this time, she actually goes for his stick, but he brings it back up before she can dive in past it, and when she's twisted to the right he gets a glancing blow on her shoulder. 

That surprises her. Him, too, and he stands up straighter. Maybe he can make it a tie, for a few seconds, anyway. 

She mirrors his grip and stance, a little more cautious now, and they play at kendo for a minute before she takes a half-step back and does something with her hanbō against his, too fast for him to see. Somehow he loses his grip, and as he stares after his stick, which clangs against the wall of the Kwoon, Mako discards her own and comes at him with just her hands. He didn't know they could do that, switch it up in the middle of a fight, but there's no time to ask Pentecost for a review of the rules, because he sees what she's about to do and he tries a left hook at her, but he can't possibly get out of the way fast enough. 

Mako ducks and grabs his now-empty right hand as she brushes past his hip, moving with the momentum of the wide and useless punch he's still swinging. She grips his wrist and raises it above her, then stands up. The pain shoots through his shoulder and down his side as he buckles. It gets worse when he puts out his left hand to keep from face-planting on the mat. And then Mako kicks out his legs, and Chuck screams because his shoulder isn't quite dislocated but if he tries any funny business you can damn well bet it will be, and Mako lowers him carefully the rest of the way down and straddles him just to be sure, and now he can't even tell if he's sobbing or laughing. 

"Four-two," says Pentecost, and only then does Mako let go of his wrist. She stays on his back a moment longer, and Chuck flashes back to the first time she flipped him. He's glad his face is already red, because there's fresh heat rising to it. Two years ago he didn't understand why the thought of Mako above him in the Kwoon made him feel like a limb had fallen asleep. Now he gets it. 

With a groan of protest from his shoulder, he puts his hands beneath him and gets up. He bows to Mako, who bows back, gracious in victory. They turn to Pentecost. 

The Marshal looks as though he ate something sour, but he says, "Report to the test range at 0600." 

This time, there is applause--after a burst of surprised murmurs, which Chuck forces himself to ignore. Yeah, she kicked his ass, but the Marshal saw what was really happening, and even if he hadn't, all that would matter is that Chuck saw it and Mako saw it. Just because he can't keep up with her doesn't mean they're not Drift compatible. 

A few cadets gather around to congratulate her. Chuck, ignored, puts the hanbō away. He limps, thanks to that trick with his leg, and his shoulder is nothing but fucked; how the hell is he supposed to use a pilot harness in the morning? 

When he turns back, Mako is the only person left in the Kwoon. Chuck thinks, _Shit_. "We're going to Drift tomorrow," he says, because he's an idiot. 

Mako looks up at him and says, "We have already Drifted." And then she reaches up and grabs a fistful of his tee shirt and pulls him down to kiss her, and all Chuck feels is relief, because this means he doesn't have to say a thing. 

He goes to one knee because that brings them closer to the same height, and now it's Mako leaning down over him, and he puts his hands on her waist and he forces himself not to pull her closer and cling to her, and when she backs away and picks up her shoes and leaves the Kwoon he just watches. 

The next morning he looks to his left as Striker Eureka comes to life around them, and Mako looks back, and the officer trainee in LOCCENT initiates the neural handshake, and everything that has ever happened to her is everything that has ever happened to him, and everything he has ever wanted is now in her head, too, and it's all right now, because she knows.

* * *

10 October, 2021 

Chuck opens his eyes and sees, well, not the first face he would have wanted to see. His throat is dry, and it feels like they had to intubate him at some point, but he manages to croak, "Where's Mako?" 

At the sound of his voice, Max springs up with more agility than his appearance would suggest, and gets off Herc's lap and straight onto Chuck's stomach. A real hospital would never have let him in, but this isn't a real hospital, or even a real Shatterdome, just a PPDC station with enough equipment to patch up a couple Jaegers and their crews. "She's fine," Herc says. "Already back on her feet, in fact. That thing nearly destroyed the right half of Striker's chest, and she kept fighting after you passed out. Coyote Tango took the kill." 

He shuts his eyes again, tight, and scratches Max's comforting fat rolls. "Shit," he says. 

"Yeah," says his old man, nothing but respect in his voice. "You oughta see the footage. No AKMs and only one Sting-Blade, and she almost downed the bastard herself." 

Chuck realizes Herc would have had to fly out, yesterday, from the Sydney Shatterdome, and wonders if Pentecost did the same from Anchorage. Two domes left without their Marshals because a pair of noobs couldn't hold it together. Their first real fight, no less, and a Mark I had to finish it. What a fucking disaster. "How soon can I get out of here?" 

Herc raises a brow at him. "No breaks, no wounds. You're a little toasted from the suit, and I'm sure they'd like to look you over bef--"

"Where did they put my pants?" He's already up, legs stiff, setting Max down gently as he yanks off the flimsy gown. The traces of the circuitry suit spread over his chest and right arm. A flash of memory: Ceramander charging, serrated horn held low, and the last thing Chuck thinks is that it's a good job the AKMs aren't armed, because if that thing sets one off, they'll all blow. Then pain, then nothing. 

His old man lets out a resigned sigh and hands him a neatly folded pile of clothes. "If you need anything else..."

"No, Dad." Chuck dresses and walks out faster than he should, willing his muscles to loosen up. He realizes in the corridor that he has no idea where Mako's temporary quarters are, but the base isn't that big, and he'll just keep on walking until he finds her. 

It must be his lucky day, because he turns a corner and sees Stacker Pentecost shutting a hatch behind him, and Chuck stops short, makes to retreat, but the Marshal has already spotted him. Pentecost looks Chuck over, lost in some private calculation, and finally gives him a formal and entirely English nod, and walks off the other way. Chuck's cheeks are burning, but then he remembers that if anyone understands losing a co-pilot in the middle of a fight, it's Pentecost. And if anyone understands fighting solo, for that matter...

As soon as the Marshal is out of sight, Chuck runs to the door. He raises his arm to knock, and gasps at the pain, but before he can move again Mako opens the hatch. She has a cardigan on over her black tank top, but he sees a jagged scar peeking out at the base of her throat. "Mako," he says like he planned all the way down the corridor, because this is something that needs to be spoken, and if he doesn't say it now he never will. "I let you down. I'm sorry. I won't ever do it again." 

Mako's eyes are red. Is it from the neural load, or has she been crying? "Better not," she replies, and gives him a grim little smile. 

Then he sees it. "What is this?" He reaches out to touch the tips of her hair. Just where it frames her jaw, it's been colored an electric blue. 

"This is from Ceramander," Mako tells him.

It takes him a minute, but then Chuck barks out a laugh. "You used its _blood_?" 

Mako nods like this is completely obvious. Of course she had the local K-Sci eggheads neutralize her a sample of Kaiju Blue so she could dye her hair. Of course that idea would occur to her, because that's not the sort of thing anyone else would consider completely bloody nuts. Of course carrying drivesuit scars around for the rest of her life isn't enough. She has to keep Ceramander in her hair, too. 

This is too much for him, too fierce and beautiful to even think about, so Chuck holds the little blue lock between his thumb and forefinger and he kisses her for the first time since the Kwoon, and Mako grabs his dog tags and pulls him into her room and shuts the hatch. He works his right hand down, beneath her cardigan, feeling the roughness of the burns as he slides the material off her shoulder, unbuttoning the sweater with his left hand. 

Mako pushes her elbow into his side and he grunts, but takes the hint and lets her turn him around. As she guides him backward, she pulls up the hem of his shirt, and Chuck lifts his arms and yelps when he remembers that he more or less got stabbed by a kaiju the day before. But then his shirt is gone and Mako's lips are on his chest, at the spot where the burned lines originate, the equivalent to the place where Striker Eureka got torn open, and Chuck shivers. 

She keeps his arms up, and suddenly the edge of the bunk is behind his knees, and Mako shoves him and he pitches backward onto a hard mattress. At his _oof_ she tilts her head, exasperated, and Chuck knows without her telling him that she would never go this easy on him if he hadn't just got out of sickbay. He grins up at her; he can't wait to be back in top form.

And then Mako goes to the desk and gets one of the foil-wrapped condoms PPDC Medical makes sure every Ranger has in their quarters, and on her way back she tugs off her tank top and trousers, and Chuck sees that his scars are just a faint echo of hers. He wants to tell her how beautiful she is, but there aren't any words that come close and it will probably be a while yet before they Drift again, so as she climbs on top of him, he lets her see it in his face.

**Author's Note:**

> This probably wouldn't exist if it weren't for quigonejinn's lovely comments on "Influence," so you can blame them. 
> 
> Also, Mako dyeing her hair with THE BLOOD OF HER ENEMIES is like my favorite fanon ever, so you can blame me for writing that twice.


End file.
